No man is an island

When a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Haiti Aug. 14, followed a few days later by a tropical storm, Legate David Adams was ready to respond.

As vice president of missions for Cross Catholic Outreach, Adams immediately activated a network that has been years in the making, working with partner organizations on the ground to distribute food, water, blankets, tarps, medicine, and medical supplies.  

Now, months after the August quake, his work and that of the 22-member Cross Catholic team is far from finished. With relief operations well under way and continuing, the government of Haiti announced in September that the recovery phase of rebuilding homes and replanting crops could begin. Many schools, churches, and houses were damaged in the latest quake, and Cross Catholic has been contributing to the rebuilding and efforts to get schools up and running in part by supplying galvanized steel roofing materials and shipping them to the island.

On the plus side, Adams said, Cross Catholic has learned that the homes the organization helped erect after the 2010 quake weathered the latest temblor well. “The feedback we’ve gotten is that none of the houses we built over the past years were seriously damaged in this quake.” The homes were designed to survive both hurricanes and earthquakes.

If there was another bright spot amid the latest devastation, Adams said it was that this quake, although twice as strong as the 2010 one, occurred in the so-called southern claw, a rural area where the largest town has a population of about 100,000. Additionally, it hit in the morning when farmers were outside tilling their fields instead of in their homes or other buildings where they might have been injured or killed in a collapse. By contrast, the 2010 quake struck a more densely populated area, which included the capital of Port-au-Prince, and claimed 200,000 lives.

Cardinal among the injured

Still, in the latest quake, at least 2,200 people died and more than 12,000 were injured. Among those hurt was Cardinal Chibly Langlois, bishop of Les Cayes and president of Haiti’s Bishops’ Conference, who reportedly was saying Mass when a house collapsed around him. The dead also included a priest.

Then, several days after the quake, Tropical Storm Grace swept over the island. “Fortunately, the winds were not severe,” Adams said, “so the wind damage was not that bad, but places like Les Cayes and lowland areas near the sea had some pretty bad flooding.”

All of this happened as the country was reeling from the coronavirus, gang violence, and the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moise.

In many ways, Cross Catholic was prepared for this latest disaster because, Adams said, thanks to substantial warehousing capacity, the ministry tends to have food and medicines ready yearround. This is crucial in a country that the World Bank says is extremely vulnerable to natural disasters and where more than 90 percent of the population is at risk from such catastrophes. Besides the 2010 and most recent quakes, Hurricane Matthew devastated the southern part of the island in 2016.

When the August quake hit, Cross Catholic had available hundreds of thousands of meals known as Vitafood, a fortified rice product with vitamins and minerals that can meet the nutritional needs of adults and counter malnutrition in children. Additionally, its longstanding relationships with mission partners in Haiti facilitated the distribution of aid.

Model of partnership

Cross Catholic’s basic model, Adams said, is to identify missionaries and ministries doing good work in such areas as low-cost housing construction, potable water, education, micro-enterprise development, elderly care, and orphan relief and then work to bolster them and boost their capacity on the ground.

The largest of these is the Kobonal Haiti Mission founded by Fr. Glenn Meaux, a priest of the Diocese of Lafayette, LA. “He’s built up this amazing Catholic ministry that’s built hundreds of homes, two primary schools, a home for the elderly and health clinics,” Adams said. The Kobonal mission also has provided agricultural assistance, clean water, educational opportunities, and spiritual formation. Cross Catholic’s other partners include Project Hope, which is in the heart of the area where the latest quake and tropical storm hit; the Grand’Anse Health and Development Association, which operates a network of 59 medical clinics; and the Haitian Resource Development Foundation, led by American physician Aldy Castor.

Adams said Cross Catholic works closely with the Church and every partnership must be approved by the local bishop, archbishop, or cardinal.

The ministry supplements the work of its partners with a cadre of international project officers who work out of its U.S. offices in Pompano Beach and Boca Raton in Florida. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the officers would travel to mission sites several times a year, but since then, they have had to rely primarily on email and telephone contact, communicating regularly with priests, nuns, and lay missionaries to determine their needs and what Cross Catholic can do to help.

Adams’ own travel opportunities for Cross Catholic also have been limited by COVID. Since joining Cross Catholic in 2006, he normally would visit Haiti once or twice a year, but has not been back since February 2020. He brought to Cross Catholic a familiarity with the country from having lived and worked there twice when he ran the U.S. government’s foreign-aid program under the administration of former President George W. Bush. During the 25 years he spent as a federal foreign service officer, he also worked in Guatemala, Africa, and Asia.

Attitude of gratitude

Well-acquainted with the level of poverty experienced by most Haitians – and worsened by events such as the recent quake – Adams nonetheless often has been struck by the deep faith of the people he has encountered there. “In many, many cases, they don’t have two nickels to rub together or whatever. Material welfare is not something they’re used to and they’re grateful for whatever they do have, and they thank God for it frequently.”

In a recent interview on Relevant Radio’s “Morning Air” program, Adams described how during the 2010 earthquake, people would be praising God amid the devastation. In one instance, he said, a partner of the ministry was out leading prayer services after having lost his son in the quake.

“On my first trip with Cross Catholic,” he told Legatus magazine, “I went to the Dominican Republic and my wife will say to this day that she was struck when I came back by how uplifted I was by the faith of the people.” Adams, who serves as president of the Fort Lauderdale Chapter of Legatus, added that he also has appreciated being able to talk openly about his faith as part of his job, something he couldn’t do while an employee of the government.

Even as Haiti has faded from the news given everything else happening here and abroad, the island nation remains a top priority for Adams and Cross Catholic, which has been involved in the country since the ministry’s inception in 2001. Haiti represents one of the ministry’s largest footprints among the 30- plus developing nations it serves in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and other parts of the world, and Adams said it maintains a presence in nearly every “department,” or state of the country.

“We’re in Haiti for the long term.”

For continual updated information, see   www.crosscatholic.org/earthquakerelief.

JUDY ROBERTS is a Legatus magazine staff writer.